News from the Research Administration and Compliance Office at the University of California, Berkeley

July 05, 2012

New Composite Fringe Rates for UC Berkeley

New composite fringe rates for the UC Berkeley campus for fiscal year 2013 are now posted on the Sponsored Projects Office web site.

These rates have been approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and are now in effect. The new rates should be used (along with the projections provided) to prepare proposal budgets. (Please note: Rates beyond June 30, 2013 are estimates and are provided for planning purposes only. Future benefits rates are subject to review and approval by the Department of Health and Human Services on an annual or bi-annual basis. Therefore, regardless of which rates are used to estimate the cost of fringe benefits at the proposal stage, the fringe benefit costs ultimately charged to the sponsored project will always be based on the DHHS-approved fringe rates in existence at that time.)

July 23, 2012 update: The following is additional guidance regarding the application of the campus’ new composite fringe benefit rates that may help with the preparation of proposals going forward:

Fringe costs now should be requested for all employees full AND part-time according to the rates posted on our webpage. Note that undergraduate student employees fringe rate is 0%.

The composite fringe benefit rates are approved by DHHS on a year-by-year basis. Thus, only FY13 rates have been approved by DHHS. Future rates are provided only for projection purposes. Final rates are subject to review and approval by DHHS a year at a time.

In FY 14 we anticipate transitioning to composite fringe rates being developed by UC Office of the President for the entire UC system. However, we should continue to use the projections specific to UC Berkeley to prepare proposal budgets until the outcomes of UCOP’s composite fringe benefit rate proposal are known.

Not all legacy fringe benefit costs are included in the new composite fringe benefit rates. Some fringe costs that carry special costing circumstances are excluded from the rates and should continue to be budgeted and expensed separately. Namely: Graduate Student Health and Tuition Remission, General Automobile and Employment Liability (GAEL), Incentive Award Assessment (IAP), and all expenses recorded to account codes in the 52XXX range such as vacation accrual and compensatory time.